


Never A Love Story

by Thimblerig



Series: What Is This Thing..? [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Aramis the Libertine, Author's Favorite, D'Artagnan the Virago, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Messy messy feelings, Mild Gore, Multi, Relationship Negotiation, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-05-13 18:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 15,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"And Iove them all,” Aramis added. “Love the widows; love the wives; love them when there's money in the bed with you.  But never make it a love story.  That way lies only fire, screams, and blood on the floor."</em>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <em>"So your ordinary day," said d'Artagnan, laughing.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Him, I'm not so sure about. Her, I like."

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a kink meme fill, but it's wandered a long way from the original prompts. I'll post them at the end of the story and you can blink a bit with me. Aaanyway. Content notes: some of the conversational topics can get a bit dark - I'll warn by the chapter if I think I'm writing a trigger. A little violence. Assume regular canon is going on in the background unless otherwise noted. So. Much. Talking.

_A man sits alone in a room, reading a book in soft amber light. Rain drums on the roof and walls; he might be the only man left in the world. There is a knock on the door._

 

**

 

"I make an excellent disgraceful drunkard," suggested Athos.

Porthos drained his beaker and set it back on the table with a click. "Vadim knows your face," he answered. "He knows all our faces."

From a stool, kitty-corner to the table, d'Artagnan's sleek head lifted.

"No," said Aramis. "Out of the question. Absolutely not.”

Athos raised one eyebrow. Aramis flattened his hands on the smooth wood, spreading his fingers wide. But some of the secrets he held did not belong to him, and he said only, "The boy is... very young." The part of that which was true, was very true.

"Hey," said d'Artagnan, "I'm almost twenty."

They returned to the discussion, tossing the ways and means of disguise back and forth as they might have done a bar tab. Aramis looked up to poll d'Artagnan's thoughts on eye patches versus false scars, versus the dire extremity of shaving, but the lad had slipped out. "Excuse me,” said Aramis.

He caught up with d'Artagnan on a street of cabarets, where the trees were hung with candle lanterns and the revellers flowed like a turning tide.

"'Don't do something reckless’ is generally not _my_ line,” said Aramis, equably enough.

D’Artagnan grinned, teeth white as a young wolf’s. '’We've all heard the Cardinal cracking down on dueling; it's plausible. I'm just the tag along kid, remember? Nobody knows who I am.”

“We know who you are,” said Aramis.

"Then I can do the plan. People like to tell me things. I have an honest face."

"The plan involves throwing you into a prison full of very bad men."

"One cell; one very bad man; out in the morning. I can out-wrestle you three times out of four. What is your problem?"

"If it were ten out of ten, I would still worry." Aramis paused as d'Artagnan stopped, head-cocked, and circled around him, something like a smile on the Gascon's wide mouth.

"So you _do_ know," d'Artagnan purred, almost gleeful.

"You don't walk like a woman," said Aramis, "but some things can give you away."

D'Artagnan touched the scarf knotted loosely around her neck, its brown and ochre stripes almost hidden in the poor light. "Everyone in the regiment reckons I got it from Athos."

"He is admired by many," said Aramis, neutrally.

He thought of the other women he'd known who put on breeches every morning and carried a gun. Would he have minded so, for them? Grizzled old Sergeant LaFleche would have laughed in his face and then broken his nose to make sure he got the joke; Marie who lived life like an opera and did not give a good goddamn had plans far more clever than this last minute bodge-up of throwing someone in a cell with Vadim and hoping he liked to gossip. Jean-Baptiste, who knew? But d'Artagnan was young and thought herself invincible...

"You don't have to do this," said Aramis. "You are not a musketeer."

And that was the exact wrong thing to say. d'Artagnan swung up an arm and called out in her thick Gascon dialect to a group of the Cardinal's Red Guards. One of the soldiers lifted his head and called back, cheerfully enough. They volleyed replies back and forth until the man's face clouded suddenly.

"Nothing like a Gascon for picking a fight on short notice," said d'Artagnan, grinning. She set her feet, sank her weight into the ground, and shoved with her hips. Aramis moved. She disappeared into the pool of night and the surge of the crowd.

In the Hart-and-Hind, in the back room, Aramis sat back down at the table, and dealt himself a hand from Porthos' deck of white-backed cards.

"If you have an objection..." stated Athos.

Aramis smiled. "Grass before breakfast," he said. D'Artagnan was young and heated as a young stallion. One way or another, the youth was going to leap into the maw of the lion. At least this way they had something resembling a plan. His hands moved nimbly over the cards, turning them and shuffling, as they played long into the night.

 

**

 

The day they met, following the youth from Gascony down a snowy road, Aramis had paused under a bare black tree and rummaged in his saddlebag for the cloth. "Just looking at your skinny neck makes me  cold," he'd said, tossing it to d'Artagnan. And then they had been hunting graves in the village of Meung, where the youth had walked past the final resting place of d'Artagnan _pere_ without sparing it a glance, in favour of one of the man's murderers and the knowledge that might be interrogated from his corpse.

They had not mentioned the scarf through what followed: Cornet and his men in the snow companioned by ravens, storming Gaudet's little fort, pulling Athos away from a firing squad and trying not to notice the look of longing on his friend's face before he passed it all off with a quip. Not until the victory celebration in the Cap-of-Gold's muggy heat had d'Artagnan tried to return the cloth, back straight with the colossal pride of the poverty-stricken. "Keep it," Aramis had said, tipping his head back to drink the last drops from his cup. He swallowed, and his throat worked around a lump of Old Adam as the hot wine slid down, and he wiped the red from his mouth. “A welcome in present, if you will.”

 

 **

 

D'Artagnan hissed. "That stings."

Aramis' hands continued to move around her wrists with a cloth soaked in alcohol, cleaning the raw red weals left by the rope. He tutted once, and fetched out fine tweezers to pick out some embedded fibers.

"How are your ears?"

"Ringing. There was a boom," she said, a little wild eyed.

"A big boom," said Aramis, one half of his mouth curling into a smile.

" _Really_ big," said d'Artagnan, waving both arms. She knocked the cloth out of Aramis' hands and he picked a clean one off the table with a sigh.

"Vadim saw right through me," she said, suddenly sad. "Called me 'Girly' at the end. Said he liked the trick of it."

"He was a clever fellow," said Aramis, catching one hand to wrap bandages around the wrist.

"Mm," grunted d'Artagnan. Then, from the far corner of the room, her voice sounded: "But city boys can't see in the dark." Aramis jumped. D'Artagnan grinned. "I like tricks too," she said.

"That's new," she said, lifting her free hand to tick a finger against the golden cross that had slipped out of his clothing.

Aramis said nothing, but he smiled.

D'Artagnan squinted suspiciously. "There's a look in your eyes; that's new too."

"No there isn't," he said unconvincingly, and tied a last knot in the bandage. "Come on," he said, clapping her on the shoulder, "time to lay on the libations with the others."

D'Artagnan followed him into the main room of the tavern. "I liked Vadim," she said plaintively.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I informed some of fem!d'Artagnan's demeanor from two slightly later historical people: Julie d'Abigny and Charlotte Charke/Charles Brown. Since my girl has yet to burn down a convent as part of a Cunning Plan to get inside a novice's knickers, I personally consider her restrained. As for grizzled old Sergeant LaFleche and Jean-Baptiste, well, Polly Olivers happened. Check out the bottom of this page for some historical examples:  
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SweetPollyOliver  
> grass before breakfast… A euphemism for dueling, culled from the Sharpe's Rifles novels (which I freely admit I scrounge a lot of military detail from, even if they are out of period).
> 
> a lump of Old Adam… “Adam's Apple” is a nickname for the lump most men develop in their throats when puberty hits. "Old Adam” can also mean a kind of... inherent inclination for troublemaking.
> 
> 'Libertine’ means "sexually loose”. It also means "free thinker".
> 
> 'Virago’ is an old word for an aggressive female, which literally means "manly woman".


	2. "One day we'll sit down and I'll explain women to you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: brief discussion of domestic violence.

"Ah, Paris,” said d’Artagnan, gazing at the busy market, "where the women show their shoulders and it's never boring.”

Aramis eyed her speculatively. “‘Shoulders, hm?”

"Ah... fashions are different in Gascony.”

"I'm sure your landlady could educate you on the finer points of Parisian dress.”

His companion blushed an ugly brick red and muttered, “She already has.”

Aramis snickered, "That sounds like a story.” He paused, hands riffling over the pamphlets on a bookseller's trestle. There was no-one nearby to hear them speak. “If it is not an intrusive question, how did your own fashion choices come about?”

D’Artagnan shrugged, leaning back against the edge of the trestle. "I was wearing working clothes for travel. My hair got caught in the fight and I had to chop it. After that," d'Artagnan shrugged and gestured to the left. "I could have put on a skirt and humbly begged aid from the law courts." She gestured right. "Oooooorr I could hunt down my father's murderer and eat his heart in the market-place." She shrugged again. "This has worked out well for me so far."

"Simple as that?”

"Simple as that. Face it, Aramis, I make a terrible girl." She waved a hand, vaguely indicating tallness, and tan-ness, a persistent slouch, and an inability to refrain from dashing about for more than five minutes at a time. "Bear in a dress. You'd laugh."

"No," said Aramis, "a wolf in a dress. Fox, perhaps."

She grinned at him, merry. "And I love soldiering, so here I am, the first of my kind.”

"Oh, you're not the first I've known,” he said. "Not even the first in the regiment.”

D’Artagnan raised her eyebrows, but a pair of housemaids in grey with crisp white aprons and bonnets had moved into earshot, and Aramis fell silent, lifting his hat to them. The younger sniffed, the elder blushed like a winter apple. "A tale for another time, perhaps.” He still had Jean-Baptiste's locket stashed in a box somewhere, an oval of curlicued silver holding a miniature of the woman she had killed to become a soldier. She got what she wanted, is how he tells himself that story.

 

**

 

"How do you... do it? Keep all your balls in the air?”

"My dear d’Artagnan, sometimes when I claim to be reading a text, I   _really am_ reading a text.”

"But…”

Aramis shifted his weight. The cold flagstones of the stinking room were already digging into his haunch-bones, and the night looked to be a long one. In the awkward light of their one tallow candle, talking was something to do.

“Be discreet,” he said eventually, “and the world can open to you like a flower. No virgins: that sort of thing ends badly.

"And Iove them all,” he added. “Love the widows; love the wives; love them when there's money in the bed with you. But never make it a love story. That way lies only fire, screams, and blood on the floor."

"So your ordinary day," said d'Artagnan, laughing.

Aramis wagged his finger warningly. "Never a love story."

Athos stirred on his pallet. “What're you two talking about?” he slurred.

"We are blackening your name,” Aramis informed him.

"It's shocking,” agreed d’Artagnan.

"Very good,” Athos mumbled, turning over, "Do not neglect that business in Tours.”

The snoring began again, steady as a lumberjack's saw. Aramis put the enamel basin in his hand back on the floor. He swept up a deck of cards Porthos had left behind and dealt five onto the flags, their faces just visible in the flickering light.

"Attend."

Tapping the first card, the Queen of Clubs, he said, "Her husband beats her. Not outside the bounds of law, and her priest is clear that wifely submission is the key to a happy marriage. She tells me that she loves him. But even so, there is a craving in her for kindness, and soft touches in the dark where her bruises do not show.

"For her I am _very_ discreet though - will you think ill of me, d'Artagnan? - if I thought there were any meaningful place for her to go I might be... a little careless, when her husband was near, that he might learn the taste of one who can hit back."

Aramis moved to the next, the Queen of Spades: "Flowers, flirtation, and fair language for this one, a young widow come into money just last year. I doubt it will go much further," he said thoughtfully. "Some people are, hm, virgins in the soul you might say." He shrugged delicately, "She likes to be wooed and I like to woo: the arrangement pleases."

For the Queen of Diamonds, he said, "Another merchant's widow, a very vigorous woman. Likes riding to hounds." He chuckled, eyes distant for a moment.

He beamed when his hand hovered over the lady of hearts. "A marquise and her redoubtable duenna."

Sweeping the queens and a solitary jack back into the deck, he said, "And I can keep all of these in play because, while I love all of them, I am _in_ love with none. Being _in love_ is like being very _drunk_ , and I do not care for either. Let me be a gentle inebriate."

Athos’ snoring paused, and Aramis looked up, hand again on the basin, but the man only grumbled something inaudible and flopped on his belly. "He'll never drown,” Aramis said, with something resembling admiration. "Throw him in the water and he'll drink it all down.”

"Hang on," said d'Artagnan, staring quizzically at the deck of cards in Aramis' hands. "There's something you did not say. I noticed. I saw." She tugged the deck of cards away and leafed through it. "These cards are marked! Porthos has been playing with a marked deck! _How_ much have I lost to him now?"

Aramis hid a smile in his moustaches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eat his heart in the market-place - reference to my favourite of Shakespeare's plays, "Much Ado About Nothing".
> 
> reading a text - one of Aramis’ excuses for his frequent absences in 3M.
> 
> ++
> 
> You hear that tinkling sound? That's Constance and Porthos having a tea party. They have their best china, and apple-ginger cake, and pretty soon Treville and Queen Anne are going to turn up with strawberries and a jug of cream.


	3. "Passion?" "Violence!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta reader, bless her patient heart, asked for something funny... The second half has a smidgen of gore in it.

“It is lovely to feel the weather finally warming,” said Aramis.

“Indeed,” said Athos, sipping from his beaker. “I did not have to break the ice in my bucket this morning; it was very congenial.”

_Thud._

“Just think,” Aramis said, waving an arm expansively from his perch on the balcony, “soon we'll be able to have more evenings like this, in that fleeting yet endless moment when the light falls just golden -”

“Late for pickpockets, early for housebreakers,” Athos murmured into his cup.

_PatpatpatTHUD_

“A time for lovers, lunatics, and sweet lyrics sung from the depths of the soul...”

Athos muttered something about lunatics and hurriedly changed it to an offer of “More wine?” at Aramis’ wounded expression.

“Truly you have the soul of a poet, my friend,” replied Aramis, holding out his own cup.

_PatpatpatTHUDthud… crunch…_

“Should we perhaps intervene?” asked Aramis, peering down into the training yard, where d'Artagnan, thrown out of a wrestling hold by Porthos, had rolled a good five yards before stopping abruptly at a wall.  

Athos watched over the railing as the Gascon staggered blearily upright, hair a rat's nest and filthy with dirt and hay. Porthos, impeccable in a dark blue training gambeson, stood easily in the centre of the ground. He ran a quick hand through his short curls, flashed his teeth in a dimpled grin, and beckoned to the youth.

D'Artagnan swayed briefly, slapped some of the dirt off, then grinned and ran right back in to the bigger man's hands.

_PatpatpatpatWheeeeeowTHUD...crunch._

“The vigour of the provinces,” said Athos philosophically.

“Then where does Porthos get it?”

Athos’ reply was cut short by their captain, who had appeared silently as was his habit. “There was a crate of good Bordeaux arrived in my office with a missing bottle,” said Treville, eyes frosty. He glared at the bottle half obscured by Athos‘ uniform cape.

“It was medicinal,” insisted Aramis, just as Athos declared, “D'Artagnan drank it.”

“Get down in the yard and do some work,” growled Captain Treville, “I'll get the rest out of your hides later.” He stalked off, swearing.

“These golden evenings, so fleeting,” said Athos as they jogged down the stairs.

_PatpatpatTHUD..._

 

 

**

 

 

"Which of them do you lie with?”

D’Artagnan skidded to a halt in the dark alley, the air in her lungs burning. The voice continued to echo off the bricks. "The big man? The pretty one?” Milady de Winter stepped into a puddle of moonlight, stately as a ship on the sea, subtle as a serpent on the rock. She raised an eyebrow. "The sot?”

D'Artagnan found her voice. "None of them,” she answered, resting a hand lightly on her dagger. The wind on her bare throat raised goosebumps down her spine.

The lady hummed thoughtfully as she glided closer, moving at an angle so that d'Artagnan had to turn to keep her in view. "It will be said that you lie with all of them, if you ever lose your coat, with the captain thrown in to even out the measure. Minds turn rather inevitably in the direction of the sordid, I've found.”

"I don't take well to threats,” said d’Artagnan roughly.

Milady looked suddenly weary. "That was a warning.”  She was close enough now that d’Artagnan could smell the perfume in her hair, something dark and rich and flowery. "Women should look after each other, should they not? It's cold outside.” She moved suddenly and d'Artagnan flinched, knowing just how fast she was with a knife, but it was only a soft cloth, flipped over her head and tucked inside her collar. Milady dropped her eyes, and busied her hands at d'Artagnan's throat. She'd finally given up her sharp-edged flirtations, it seemed, and kept her hands brisk and almost motherly as they wound and tucked.

''Lesson the first," she said, stepping back to admire her handiwork, “never drop anything you can't afford to lose. Not even when it's desperate. Especially when it's desperate.”

"You're offering lessons now?” asked d’Artagnan, lips quirking.

"Do you want what I have to teach?” asked Milady with an answering smirk.

D’Artagnan hesitated. The woman was secrets wound up in mysteries, garnished with a panache of ribbon and a waft of hidden perfume. She noted the scatter of little black spots on one full sleeve; they would show red in daylight, d’Artagnan was sure.

She had always liked dangerous things.

"And the second lesson?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light, as if in jest.

"Know who your friends are.” Milady shoved a leather wallet, soggy with some odd liquid, into the opening of D'Artagnan's vest. They both turned at a hullaballoo a few streets over, the hunters d'Artagnan had outrun, no doubt. "Until next time," said Milady, and disappeared into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _stately as a ship on the sea, subtle as a serpent on the rock_ \- cf. Proverbs 30: 19


	4. "There was a woman."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A hint of unrequited pining in the Comte de la Fere's direction, I guess, and a desperate lack of Porthos.

Aramis kept rooms on the rue de Vaugirard, a quiet side street, with a small attached garden that was shady and fragrant in the summer months. His sitting room was at this time festooned with paraphernalia - his weapon belts draped over chairs and smelling of the dubbin and beeswax recently worked into the leather, his guns, the pistol and the arquebus and the long-nosed musket he was supposed to keep in the garrison, a basket of shirts that needed a few careful stitches, and, in his hands, a small porcelain mortar inside which he ground a quantity of gunpowder into a carefully gauged fineness. The brimstone and charcoal reek of the powder blended oddly with the green smell of the pot of basil that he kept on one windowsill. In the peace of the evening, d'Artagnan moved from one spot to another like a nocturnal bee.

She lifted the lid of a pot set over the cheerful fire and blinked at the contents, several skeins of silk thread suspended in bubbling water. "Something I read in a pamphlet last week,” said Aramis, his hands still busy. "A physician by the name of Lemay had some theories on wound healing.

"Do you ever stop working?” asked d'Artagnan.

"Are you asking for the scandalous details of my play time?”asked Aramis, a smile curling in his mouth. "For shame, d'Artagnan, for shame. And what brings you to my humble home? Do the delights of the Bonacieux residence pall?”

"They're working on their _marriage_.” D'Artagnan almost spat the words. "I'm better out of it.”

“‘Happy wife, happy life’?” quoted Aramis.

"Oho, a public benefactor.”

"I can but humbly throw myself on the altar of the greater good.“

D'Artagnan snickered. Then, “My father never made maman squeeze herself up so he could get bigger. I remember _that_ much. It's... Bonacieux shouldn't grab her arm like that.“

“No, he shouldn't,” Aramis agreed quietly.  

“Constance won't talk about it.” D'Artagnan collapsed in a chair and let her head fall against the wall with a thunk. “I'm never getting married.”

Aramis raised a cup. “To freedom and a merry libertinage!”

“To freedom,” d'Artagnan muttered. “Hey, Aramis? Is Athos your jack?”

Aramis choked on his drink. “What brought that on?”

“Just asking.”  Her eyes were suspiciously innocent.

He set down his cup and wiped his mouth, picking up the mortar. The powder in it was still dry; he started grinding again with a smooth twist of his wrists. “Any fellows of my acquaintance who might in some lights be viewed as _in_ a deck of cards, rather than _playing_ it, are not connected with the regiment. Or in the city this month, so don't bother looking.”

“Right,” she said then. “I sort of thought as much. Um. Just checking.”

“Discretion is a virtue,” he said tipping out the powder and pouring in new, coarse grains.

“He's a good man...”

"You have yet to see him gamble away a week's food money and the Italian leather boots that you are still wearing," remarked Aramis dryly.  "We all have our foibles."  

He was still, to be honest, very angry with Athos after their adventure with the merchant adventurer Bonnaire: left to lead a prisoner like a snake on a leash to Paris with one man gone, one man injured, and who knew what other enemies dropping out of the trees, left to let his _brother_ limp off like an injured wolf seeking a den to die in. He’d pointedly not paid too much attention when d'Artagnan slipped away at dusk, and cursed himself after, wondering what trouble might find them in the dark. There were reasons Aramis had never sought after a lieutenancy, and days like that were one of them. The tricky Gascon had made the catch one more time, dragging Athos back in the morning with smoke in both their hair and their mouths clamped shut. But the anger still burned, long after Porthos' shoulder had mended itself.  

So, and so.

He had sworn not to pry into Athos’ affairs, but nowhere in that solemn oath had he precluded information that thrust itself into his hands. If an untutored provincial felt like sharing, for example.

“Even good men get into scrapes,” he said non-committally.

“Like that business back in Pinon,” said d’Artagnan thoughtfully.  

Aramis put on his best approachable face: concerned, gentle, ready to listen.

“It must have been a fearsome fire...” he speculated innocently.

“Mm,” said d’Artagnan, rubbing her chin, “and he was right in the middle of it when the manor went up, that, that _arsehole._ ”

Truly she was becoming a member of their merry band.

“So you threw yourself into the burning wreckage hoping to salvage what you could," said Aramis.

"I guess?"  D'Artagnan hesitated, "Some of this is private," she said.

"Hm," answered Aramis, looking down at the black powder in his mortar and pestle, his hands working smoothly.

"After I dragged him out, whoever set the fire might have come back, and I didn't know the roads.  He was so cold.  I went for the woods and snugged us down under some leaves."  She waved a hand, "Body heat."

"I'm familiar with the remedy."  Aramis grinned, sharp and sudden.

"He woke a few hours later and... I think he thought I was his wife," d'Artagnan insisted earnestly.

Aramis' hands stopped.

"I don't know what to do with tears," d'Artagnan confessed.  "Do men cry a lot?  I didn't know.  I... might have kissed him."

"Where?"

"In the leaves."  Aramis looked at her.  "On the temple," she clarified.  Her eyes flicked to the side and she shivered again at the terrifying, stolen intimacy of it, as he curled into her and wept like a child who had been beaten.  "He kissed me back," she said abruptly, and rubbed a knuckle across her lips.  

Then she shrugged.  "He went right back to sleep and I was back in my jerkin by morning.  He doesn't remember a thing.  It wasn't _real_."

"But it happened."

"Mm."  _Anne, I just had the most horrible dream._


	5. "I like to be polite."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to put in funny bits every now and then or my beta gets sad. And she's a good beta, so.

D'Artagnan leaned in, sniffing Aramis’ lace-edged collar. "Rose-water," she said consideringly, "gunpowder, some kind of spice, and..."

"Vanilla," answered Aramis. "It comes from a bean."

"Well that's... not as romantic as I thought it'd be."

"Beautiful things come from humble beginnings. I must introduce you to coffee sometime."

"Tried it. It's awful."

She sniffed again; he felt her cold nose pressing against his neck.

“Is this really a good time?”

He heard the rustle of cloth as d'Artagnan pointedly looked around the the blackness that cloaked them, and up to the stars faintly visible from the mouth of the storage pit in which they lay. “You'd prefer a rousing game of My Aunt Suzie?” she wondered.

Aramis sighed. His arms, roughly bound behind him, were already aching, and the awkward position he was trapped in made it far worse. He tried again to shift the weight on his legs: no good.

“I miss my hair,” said d’Artagnan.

“Where did that come from?”

He felt her shrug against his side. “I just do.”

“Paint it for me,” Aramis suggested. “Was it straight like it is now or did it curl when it grew longer?”

“Oh, straight as a schoolmaster’s ruler,” she said. “Couldn't take an iron - the curls just fell right out. I used to braid it down my back and it swayed as I walked. My one good feature.”

He wondered if she wanted him to tell her she was still pretty, or that such things didn’t matter, or to toss out some flippancy: the girl wasn't always easy to read. He went with, “Down to your waist, then?”

“My knees,” said d’Artagnan triumphantly. “Black as a raven’s wing.”

Aramis whistled appreciatively.

The heavy weight that trapped both their legs stirred. Porthos was waking. (Also, alive, that was always commendable. But! Priorities!)

He shoved up with a knee. “Avaunt ye, Leviathan.” Porthos grumbled woozily and rolled off them.

“Ngh!” Beside him d'Artagnan hissed.

“Are you hurt?” breathed Porthos, suddenly wide awake.

Aramis shook his head. “Pins and needles.” He shook his legs awkwardly.

“You're heavy,” added d'Artagnan.

“That’s ‘cause my heart’s so big,” grinned Porthos.

“And everything else.”

“So the ladies tell me.” Porthos rolled and shifted, grunting, until he lay roughly parallel with the other two. He leaned in and sniffed Aramis’ collar. “Is that vanilla? Nice.”

“I had a romantic liaison planned for the evening,” said Aramis.

“The pretty Marquise?”

“With the formidable chaperone, yes. There were going to be fireworks,” added Aramis wistfully.

“Because he's so discreet,” drawled d'Artagnan.

“Hush, you. Fireworks in the Luxembourg gardens, strawberries, a book of sweet nothings to whisper in her ear -”

“Chased off by the chaperone at eleven...” said Porthos.

“If we lasted that long,” Aramis laughed. “What a fierce defender of her charge’s virtue. And berry red lips. And sweet white body...”

“Good thing those two get along so well,” said Porthos.

“I guess…?” said d’Artagnan, puzzled.

Aramis kicked Porthos.

“What's funny about a chaperone doing her job?” said d’Artagnan blankly. As Porthos snickered, she rolled her eyes. _“Parisians.”_

“Says our provincial friend, never having kissed a girl - Ah ah! The magnificent Madame Bonacieux doesn't count unless it wasn't for a mission.”

“I have kissed a girl,” said d’Artagnan with great dignity. "Though if I wanted to be technical, I would say that _she_ kissed _me_. Then she framed me for murder.”

Aramis let out a bark of surprised laughter. "Finally!” he said, ”I'm not the only one who can say that!”

Porthos had gone quiet, when he normally found that story hilarious. Aramis rolled on his side and squinted through the blackness. Even close enough to smell the musky hair oil the larger man used, he couldn't see worth a damn. “Porthos?” he called softly.

His friend shook himself awake again. “My head aches,” he apologised.

Aramis tutted. “We’ll try to keep you awake.” Behind him he could feel d'Artagnan turn and her fingers start to work awkwardly at his bonds. “How about a rousing game of Guess What Year D'Artagnan’s Balls Dropped? Ow,” he added, as d'Artagnan kicked him.

“Wha' was that raven wing you two were on about before?”

Behind him D’Artagnan remained silent. “There was a girl our Gascon knew,” Aramis said eventually. “We were talking about her.”

“Right...” grunted Porthos. “Did you like her?”

D’Artagnan hesitated, and then said, “Yes… yes I did. But there was something she wanted, and so she had to go away.”

“Tha’s awright... then,” mumbled the big man, dropping down into another doze.

D'Artagnan swore as her finger caught in Aramis’ ropes. “If we're not out of here by morning,” she said, “I am going to be very embarrassed.”

“And eviscerated,” said Aramis cheerfully.

“There you go, Aramis, always looking on the bright side.”    

“The real question,” said Porthos sleepily, “is how stupid Athos thinks we are.”

“Oh,” said d’Artagnan, relieved. “So he'll be right along, then.”

 

**

 

Silent as a shadow, Athos prowled between the taut guy-lines of the rebel militia’s tents. There was another sentry ahead, smelling strongly of onions and scratching the back of his neck awkwardly under his new helmet. Athos walked up behind him and caught the man’s neck in a sleeper hold, his other hand gripping white-knuckled over the man's mouth. As he slowly collapsed, Athos murmured “Boo” in his ear, then dragged him into the shadows. Five down. He paused then, at a narrow thread of voice coming from a pit like a black mouth in the rough ground.

“... _When_ I went to _market_ ,” said d’Artagnan, in a light sing-song voice, “I bought a lump of cheese, three onions, two radishes, a lacy ribbon, another onion, a pair of white rabbits, a-treatise-regarding-the-transmutation-of-flesh-and-spirit-and-its-implications-on-that-precious-thing-free-will-by-the-Bishop-of-Tours-because-Aramis-is-a-jerk-and-nobody-likes-him,” deep breath, “more onions, a red shawl, the absent heart of the Cardinal Richelieu and, and, a new hat, for My - Aunt -”

“Suzie,” Athos called down softly, crouching at the edge of the pit.

“Hey,” said d’Artagnan. He could hear the smile in the boy's voice.

“Are you well?”

“Porthos hit his head; he's drifting in and out a bit. We're fine -” D’Artagnan’s voice took on a sudden urgency: “Athos - what time is it?”

Athos frowned, concerned. “It lacks ten minutes of three,” he said, consulting his timepiece, barely readable in the dark.

“Ha!” the Gascon crowed in quiet triumph. A groan from Aramis drifted up from the depths. “And I just won five pistoles.”

Athos held in his sigh. Truly, the boy had become a member of their merry band.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Aunt Suzie - if it wasn't clear from the text this is a memory game. The first player starts a list (a lump of cheese) and the next player has to remember the list and add another item. It just keeps going until someone makes a mistake.
> 
> She kissed me. Then she framed me for murder. - Athos is also a member of this club, though none of Our Heroes have realised at this point in the story. Just to cut off speculation, I won't be developing this into a main plot. It's a blip, a speck, a muddle that was sorted in an afternoon when everyone realised the 'victim’ had gone on holiday.
> 
> My one good feature - going by period portraits, standards of beauty - for men and women - emphasised pale complexions, a little plumpness, and fine, delicate bone structure. (And a mysterious lack of eyelashes.) Girl!d'Artagnan, who is tall, thin, and very tan, thinks herself unbeautiful because every reference she has tells her so. I leave it to the reader to make their own judgement with regards to the picture in their heads.


	6. Interlude: Constance

Constance turned away abruptly and busied herself at the kitchen table, peeling carrots with brusque efficiency. D'Artagnan followed her on cat feet and settled light hands on Constance's waist. “Come on,” she murmured, lowering her head over Constance's fair shoulder, close enough to feel the breath. “Tell me you haven't thought of it, dreamed of it. Just a taste, between us women, yes? _Nobody needs to know._ ”

Constance drew in a shuddering breath, eyes shut. “You'd teach me swords, too?” she asked.

“Swords, too,” promised d'Artagnan.

Constance's smile bloomed like the sun.


	7. "A known libertine..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit more serious, nothing to raise the rating, but there are content notes at the end for if you don't like surprises.

Aramis was not a physician. Neither was he a surgeon. He could stitch a gash and draw a musket ball if it were not too near the heart, and he'd had a little luck with wounds healing dry. That was really as far as his expertise went. Even so, in his military career, he'd had countless fellow soldiers come to him with mysterious drips, alarming rashes, and peculiar sprains in areas unmentionable in polite company. He had an approachable face. It was not exactly the life he'd imagined, when he'd first run off to join the army.

"Stop moving,” he chided, squinting at the cut he was trying to suture. Once again the view was blocked, as d'Artagnan twisted to look and a dislodged fold of her shirt dropped over his hands. "You are worse than Athos. This is an achievement.”

“Hang on,” murmured d'Artagnan, and, leaning forward, dragged the dirty linen over her head and dropped it on the tumbled strip of batting she used to pad out her waist. “What?” she asked, looking over her shoulder, “I'm sure you've seen it before. Am I, am I inflaming your senses and maddening your manly heart?”

“Your virtue is safe with me,” Aramis answered dryly. Thank God the door was locked. He eyed her critically where she perched on the infirmary table - wiry with long muscle, broad-shouldered and wide-handed, with the developed forearms of an experienced fencer. But… “You're too thin,” he said, rapping a knuckle on the prominent ribs that showed under her breast bindings. “What has the beautiful Madame Bonacieux been feeding you, nails?”

“She feeds me fine!” insisted d'Artagnan loyally. “I just… get distracted. There's so much to do…”

“Hm,” said Aramis, turning back to the gash on her side.

“Hey, Aramis?” she said then, in a voice he had come to know far too well. A mysterious drip, so soon? Prodigious!

But she went with, “How do you know if you're pregnant?“

He blinked, but held back a quip about lacking the appropriate equipment. D'Artagnan stared with determination at the bare wall. She didn't feel she could ask Madame Bonacieux? But then, who chose to talk to whom about what was one of life's ineffabilities - and Aramis had an approachable face. He leaned around to look at her front: her belly was flat, almost hollow.

Another profession Aramis did not own was midwife. But he tried, dredging his memories back to, well, to Isabelle, proud fair-haired Isabelle, and asked, “Have you been queasy then?” A tiny head shake. “Unusually tired?”

“I'm always tired,“ said d'Artagnan. “Not out of the common way,” she added hurriedly. “Training is supposed to make you tired; that's how you know you're doing it right.”

“Well, when did you last lie with a man? Standing up counts,” he added.

“Does it?” asked d’Artagnan with curiosity. “I haven't. Lain with a man, that is.“

Then, why…?

D'Artagnan answered his unspoken question. “Something has stopped,“ she said in a small voice.

He really didn't want to be having this conversation. He still had to check: “Ahh… have any fights you've been in gone a particular kind of bad? Or… have you woken up after a... heavy sleep or a night of drinking with pain... down there?“

“I win all my fights,” said d’Artagnan, affronted, “and I can't afford to get drunk unless I'm with you lot. Why do you ask? Oh. _Oh,”_ she said, her voice growing ugly with suppressed rage. “Because I'm a woman, right? And that's what _happens._ To women who _stray._ “

He put a hand on one shoulder in an attempt to soothe. “Not just women, as it happens.”

Her head shot around and she looked at his features searchingly. Another reason to hate this kind of conversation. “People tell me things,“ he said simply. “I hear too much.“

Her eyes narrowed. Finally she nodded minutely. “It's a wicked world,” she admitted.

He blew air through his nose. “Understand that the entire regiment has your back, apprentice, no questions asked. Should there be need.“

“I’m not weak,” she muttered.

“You are under fed, though,” he replied, harking back to grizzled old Sergeant LaFleche and her grumbles about rations at the siege of Montauban. “Use your Sundays as the good Lord intended, for rest; butter your bread; eat good red meat, and your monthly… friend should come back. Should I have a word with the delightful Madame Bonacieux?”

“The hell,“ she answered.

“And come see me if you want to expand your repertoire of techniques. There are… ways of staving off blessed miracles with a little forethought.“

“Is that an offer?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows.

“I don't do virgins,” he said equably, and knotted the last of the sutures.

 

**

 

A couple of weeks later the sun threw all its ire into the court of the Musketeers’ garrison. D'Artagnan stamped back and forth in the training yard, repeating over and over the drills that would let her, in a real fight, move like an eel through the water. Sweat dripped down her nose and soaked through her shirt; she cursed the leather jerkin and the bindings she wore to blur her shape. Aramis and Porthos were working with muskets with another squad, their fire a rhythmic stutter. In the cool shade of the balcony above Captain Treville stood, both hands on the rail, surveying his troops. D'Artagnan’s muscles screamed and her arms were starting to tremble.

Athos grunted beside her, the one that meant ‘good’, and she stood a little straighter. Then he clucked his tongue and beckoned her off. She followed, sword trailing in her hand, to the heavy tables at the side of the yard, where he sat down, expressionless. He took up one of two bowls of the watery slop that was Serge’s version of pottage, dug in a spoon, and began eating with a methodical air. The other bowl steamed. D'Artagnan waved a hand. “I'll pass,” she said. It wasn't her habit to eat this early. “Wanted to get more practice in,” she said, turning back to the yard. Among the gunners she caught a glimpse of Aramis turning his head away. _Huh_. Athos never ate during the day. This was some kind of… point, was it? Her belly started to roil as she paced away.

“I would not starve my horse,” said Athos. His voice was quiet, but it stopped her in her tracks. “I would not stint my blade its oil, nor my gun its shot.”

D’Artagnan’s nostrils flared. She turned, swelling with indignation.

Athos stared at nothing in particular, eating his early dinner with an air of grim duty. “A good soldier maintains the whole of his equipment,” he said levelly.

D'Artagnan ground her teeth and flopped down on the bench. She picked up the spoon.

 

**

 

The door was not locked, though it stuck in the humidity of an incoming thunder storm. D'Artagnan set her shoulder to it and shoved: the door to Aramis‘ sitting room flew open and she stumbled into the gap. He did not look up from his book. “Thank you for getting Athos to eat today,” he said mildly.

She said something filthy in her rough Gascon dialect. “You two were talking about me.”

“Because you are indeed the centre of our universe,” he said, still reading.

“That was private,“ she said, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms across her abdomen. Somehow her righteous indignation was draining away before she could work it up into a proper fury. She didn't like it. “The thing about my dinners. I didn't give you permission to talk about it.”

Aramis lifted himself up from the chair and shut his garden door gently. “It is a delicate business,” he said, “asking people to care and then stop when it gets awkward. You'll master the trick in time I'm sure.”

He eyed her sidelong. “And as it happens I didn't, not about that.” He drifted the backs of his fingers across one razor-sharp cheekbone. “Your eating habits are starting to show.” He turned away. “Athos thinks he has been setting you a bad example. But then, the man has always been better at looking after other people than himself.”

“I'll always be the kid to you,“ she complained, “the _woman.”_

“You all look like children to me,” he said, “even Porthos.” Wandering through to his dining room he opened a cupboard, scratched his head in puzzlement, and opened another. _“_ Most of our recruits have a good two years of campaigning tucked in their jackets before ever they step in our yard. They've learned a little self-preservation along with the sin.”

He came back with half a loaf of soft white bread on a plate, and a pat of butter on the side. “Eat that and I'll tell you a story.”

D’Artagnan eyed the bread dubiously. It wasn't cut but oddly ragged, as if people had been plucking bits of it away in the course of some other - engrossing - activity. “Is this a dirty story?”

“There's mud in it,” Aramis allowed, and regaled her ears with his first military action, near a decade ago, tripping through the siege of Montauban as a downy-cheeked youth, and the slave-driving termagant of a sergeant who somehow kept him alive to drive her mad...

 

**

 

Aramis woke in the night and lay still, eyes moving about the blackness of the room. He could hear an early bird singing over the harshness of his breath. The promised thunder had been a flirtation only and the air was thick and heavy against the clamminess of his skin. Maybe it was that damp heat. Or all the talk of wartime, perhaps.

He shook his head ruefully and rolled over, letting the sheet fall away and fumbling for flint and steel and tinder. It wasn't d'Artagnan's fault she reminded him of Jean-Baptiste, great lolloping gangles of girls that they both were. Had been. He'd shared Sergeant LaFleche stories with Jean-Baptiste too as he recalled, quiet voices filling a night watch in camp at the tail end of winter.

It was pointless and morbid to brood, on Jean-Baptiste or the others, so he didn’t, but he wouldn't sleep again either. He padded through his apartment light in hand and, filling an enamel basin, he washed off the sweat and pulled on a clean shirt. There was a chapel nearby with an understanding priest and a very comfortable _prie-dieu_. After that, well, Porthos gambled at all hours, or perhaps one of his lady friends would enjoy an impromptu serenade. He'd fill the hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Health talks, a discussion of the possibility of sexual assault, minor nudity, someone with poor eating habits gets called on that in a fairly ham-handed fashion. Implied (minor) character death. 
> 
> There'll be a bit of a wait while I write some more connecting bits.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	8. “That night at Madame Angel’s...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do something angsty around 1.04, but my muse had a yen for something bawdy, so…
> 
> Nothing goes very far, but there are content warnings at the end for those who don't like surprises.

“No, higher,” said d’Artagnan, breathing heavily. “There, that's-the-spot, harder, no, harder - could you put your back into it please - uh -” She broke off.

“More?” purred her partner, grinning. D'Artagnan only whined, fisting her free hand in the brocade counterpane. The moment stretched out, cracked by a sharp urge to sneeze. At last something in her shoulder popped and she sighed, dropping her head. “You can let go now.”

Behind her Celestina Lafayette, Madame Angel’s third-best artiste, blinked cat green eyes and rubbed d'Artagnan's sore shoulder soothingly. “All better?”

“Much.” The musk and patchouli in this little room really was very strong. _“Achoo!”_

“Bless you,” murmured Celestina. She leaned forward with a rustle of petticoats, curling her legs around d'Artagnan's hips and resting her chin on the other’s shoulder. “Can I make something else better?”

D’Artagnan looked down at the hand now resting on her cloth-wrapped breast. It was a very pretty hand, dainty, white, and smelling of almond paste. It felt… not bad, exactly, but odd. Intrusive. “Um,” she said. “It isn't that you're not incredibly beautiful, but. Uh.” Words were not d'Artagnan's friends, sometimes.  

Warm breasts and boned stays moved against d'Artagnan's back as Celestina sighed. “Always the pretty ones,” she groused.

“You don't need to tell me I'm pretty,” said d’Artagnan. She bumped her forehead lightly against Celestina’s. “How about a footrub?”

“It's your hour,” said Celestina, and almost purred when d'Artagnan scooped up one shapely leg and dug strong thumbs into the arch of her foot.

There were footsteps in the hall outside and Celestina muttered imprecations about the soundproofing. The footsteps moved into the room next door: the light trip of a woman, and a heavier, more certain tread. An articulated thump as the paraphernalia of a soldier was removed and set aside.  Voices, low and amused.

D'Artagnan stiffened, as she recognised one of them.

“Oh, you are interested?” murmured Celestina. “That wall has no peepholes but -”

“Peepholes?!” d'Artagnan hissed.

“Not in this room,” Celestina assured her. “I respect your privacy.  And we are a reputable establishment. But, you like?”

D’Artagnan found herself shivering, somehow. She'd known, in her head as it were, that Aramis had many lovers. Somehow she had not truly considered what that _meant._ The rhythm of the voices changed - slower, yet more intent. When did d'Artagnan lose a layer of skin? She moved to go, but her companion tightened her arms around her.

Celestina moved her hand again to d'Artagnan's breast and what she felt there made her rosebud mouth curl. “Ah, that one,” she murmured in the other’s ear. “Aramis. We know him well, here. Would you like me to tell you how he is, with a woman?”

“Ah, n-.”

“When he kisses you, just in this spot? But that is only the start.” A hand moved on d'Artagnan's belly, slow and warm.

“Leave off,” said d’Artagnan faintly.

“He says such things, so dark and rich...” But the voice coming through the wall wasn’t dark at all, the cadences of it changed to honey brandy, the sweetness of it and behind that fire. The woman answered, low and throbbing. “Sometimes I think, just from his words, I could -”

“Let me go,” d'Artagnan snarled. _“This isn't funny.”_ Shaking Celestina free, she yanked a shirt over her head, gathered her gear, and kicked open the door.

She was cramming feet into her boots in the hall, still fuming, when she realised that Aramis had come out and was crouched beside her. Ah, she hadn't been quiet near the end, had she? _Hell._ She squinted at him. “You lot were on night duty at the Louvre.”

He shrugged. “Last minute shuffling on the roster. Porthos’ cards were involved.”   

He was, at least, still in his breeches, one scalloped brace dangling free, the other looped over his (bare, warm ivory) shoulder; he rested his forearms on his thighs and let his (nimble, calloused, gentle) hands dangle free as he asked softly, “Alright?”

D'Artagnan rolled her eyes at the half open door to Celestina’s room and said in exasperation, _“Women.”_

He smiled faintly at that, crinkles showing at the corners of his eyes and in his cheeks, and suddenly d'Artagnan wanted to put a hand there, to know how it felt when he smiled under her fingers, or trace down, over bristle and beard to -

“I am going downstairs for a drink,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Please do not let me keep you from your lady friend.”

He nodded, straightening, and offered a hand, which she took. She stopped at the head of the stairs and looked back, amused, as a green silk cushion flew out of Aramis’ room and hit him in the face. “Bernadette, my heart,” he protested.

She didn't neaten her clothes as she went down to the brothel’s parlour. Being seen here dishevelled and flushed was at least half of the point, after all.

This she explained to Aramis, hours later, as they walked away from Madame Angel’s famed establishment. There had been a flirtation of rain, earlier, that had briefly quenched the summer heat and the persistent stench of a crowded city. A few last drops spattered on d'Artagnan's face.

“Thierry and Carpentier dragged me out here last month. Something about putting hair on my chest? Aaaanyway, turns out Celestina is from Gascony, one village over from Lupiac, with a serious interest in word _not_ getting back to her family about how she's earning her dowry. _So we're friends._ ”

“I can never tell if you Gascons are an extended family or a protection racket.”

D’Artagnan stuck out a hand and waggled it non-committally.

“She’s a good sport, mostly. I promised to be her steady lover whenever one of her customers gets too pressing, and in trade she's my… steady lover. I,” said d’Artagnan grandly, “am affirming my masculinity.”

Aramis moved to slap her shoulder in solidarity, but she twitched, as if from a hot coal. His hand hovered for a heartbeat then settled down to hook in his gunbelt as they paced along.  

They turned a corner and d'Artagnan stopped, drawing breath. She cocked her head, eyeing him intently. Aramis raised an eyebrow. He was standing too far away for her to tell if he smelled of patchouli from Madame Angel’s or some other thing. She let out her breath. “Not with the Marquise?“

“Of the indomitable duenna? She had other things on her mind,” he answered gravely, and waited.

“What are you thinking?”

He put his hand over his heart, “With some regret,” he quipped, “that I missed your first trip to a brothel, apprentice. These rites of passage fly so fast.”

She grinned at that. “I'll try to save you one,” and then caught herself, because how the hell did that sound?

If Aramis inferred any innuendo he didn't let it show, saying thoughtfully, “Fainting on parade… making the Cardinal splutter…  Treville tearing a strip off one's hide… all three at the same time… falling in the Seine…”

“I already fell in the Seine,” d'Artagnan corrected.

He clicked his tongue. “Drat. I am heartbroken.”

She looked over his shoulder in alarm suddenly and, when he whirled around, hand on pistol, stole his hat. “There,” she said, cocking it at a rakish angle, “first time I did that.”

“Such impudence,” he chided, but let her wear it all the way to the Bonacieux residence.  

She turned at the door. In the spill of light from Constance's kitchen he looked… stretched, somehow. Tired. “Eh, Aramis? Maybe you should spend part of the night sleeping. It's going to be all fancy tomorrow…”

Aramis smiled briefly. “I promise,” he said, “not to faint on parade in front of the Duke of Savoy.” He touched a finger to his hat brim and took his leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Scantily clad ladies getting somewhat intimate; unintended voyeurism; someone is pressured regarding a sexual situation and leaves the scene. People are reasonably happy by the end of the chapter.


	9. “I'm a soldier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode tag to 1.04 “The Good Soldier”
> 
> Emotional constipation _and_ a group hug, how ‘bout that?

Damp as it was, their spirits were high as they rode back from the Bastille.

“The look on the Cardinal's face when he saw who I was!” crowed d'Artagnan. “Does that count as a splutter?”

“As much as he gets,” said Athos dryly.

D'Artagnan shook, rather like a dog, spraying water from sleek black hair.

“We need to get you a hat,” said Porthos, holding a large hand between himself and the spray.

“I shall ride free, free as nature made me,” answered d'Artagnan, grinning, but then quietened. “How long is, well, _he_ going to stay there?”

Athos was silent.

At last Porthos answered, “If we ever need something big from Spain, maybe. Real big. Or this all gets forgotten...”

“We did our duty,” added Athos grimly. He reined in his horse, then, looking through the gates of their garrison. “Something’s wrong.”

Inside the Hotel de Treville, musketeers swarmed like bees in a shaken hive, angry and uncertain where to sting.

Athos stopped one of them. “Report, Thierry,” he said crisply.

Thierry, raw boned and with sparse eyebrows, looked at him wildly, his blond ringlets draggled into rat-tails. “There were shots then the Captain went out with the supply cart. Aramis was with him. And there's blood on the armoury floor!”

Athos and Porthos shared a look, then Porthos dismounted, landing with a great splash in a growing puddle. “Awright lads,” he bawled. “We're gonna clean this place up a-fore the Captain gets back. Mops and buckets on the double. And while we're out it's a stable not a pigsty, don't think I didn’t see. _Move.”_ They hopped to it.

Athos wheeled his horse out the gate. “With me,” he told d'Artagnan.

 

**

 

They wasted time searching through Poupart's morgue and three potter’s fields before Athos swore and led them to the tiny churchyard that served the regiment and they found him, as blank as one of the nearby statues washed in the rain. He'd lost his hat, somewhere, and his scabbard was empty.

“You were right, Athos,” said Aramis, standing at the lychgate and staring out into the street, “the Captain is not a traitor. And I did not like what I found at the end of the road.”

“Athos thrashed the Duke of Savoy for you,” said d’Artagnan. “It was all over the palace! The talk, I mean.”

Aramis turned his head and blinked.

Athos remained impassive. “It was a formal match,” he said, “requested by the Duke.”

A smile curled the corners of Aramis’ mouth. “I'll want a blow-by-blow. Later.”

“What will you do now?”

“I am going home,” he said, setting off down the street. He called over his shoulder, “Come if you like.”  

 

**

 

They shoved into Aramis’ front room, their weapons and dripping coats and the one wide-brimmed hat crowding the elegant furnishings. In the greyness of the rainstruck afternoon light the room itself looked aggrieved and out-of-sorts. Aramis turned and gestured with his arm: “My house is your house,” he said lightly.

“Aramis…” breathed Athos.

And Aramis slowly crumpled forward, hiding his face on Athos’ chest. D'Artagnan hovered uncertainly. Athos looked up. “Light the fire,” he instructed softly, nodding towards the grate. “A small one will do.”

“Right.” D’Artagnan bustled into action.

Athos’ gloved hand came up and rubbed Aramis’ back. “I'm terrible at this,” he muttered.

“So am I,” answered Aramis, still hiding his face. “In front of the young one, no less.”

“The boy’s earned a little trust, don't you think?”

“Even so.” He blew air through his nose. “There was smoke in your hair, after Pinon.”

Athos’ hand stopped. “... yes.”  

The fire crackling, d'Artagnan straightened and walked, muddy-booted, into Aramis’ bedroom to come out with a nightshirt and a dressing gown of brilliant kingfisher blue. After some rumination, they were draped on pegs by the mantelpiece and the youth disappeared into the dining area.

“How long were you standing in the rain?” The damp of Paris wasn't a joke, even in summer.

"It's not the wet,” said Aramis. “Making me shake that is. I used to get like this after fights. Gave it up as a waste of time before I met you. It's… I just -” He broke off.

Athos’ hand moved to his collar and shook him gently. _“You are allowed to be sad,”_ he hissed.

D'Artagnan returned, picked up a chair, then disappeared. There was a faint banging from the next room.

“If you stand in those wet clothes much longer, you will likely fall to a summer ague,” said Athos, “which will no doubt go to your lungs and turn putrid.”

“Always looking on the bright side, Athos.”

“And then you will die,” he went on relentlessly, “and all the ladies will gather round the coffin and say, Ah! Aramis! Why is his face green?”

Aramis huffed with laughter. “Right then.” But he didn't move.

Athos patted his shoulder. “On three.” It still took a fair amount of manhandling but he had Aramis changed and on the settle in front of the little fire by the time d'Artagnan came back with a kettle and a lacquered box of expensive, bitter chocolate from wherever Aramis had hidden it.

"What, no sugar plums?" Aramis asked with large, faux-innocent eyes, hair still dripping, but fell asleep, head lolling on Athos' shoulder before d'Artagnan could formulate a reply. D'Artagnan bit her lip, looking at them.

Athos stared back, expressionless. “Sit,” he said.

 

**

 

She cracked one eye open to sunlight, an aching head, and Athos’ muttered, “Mother of God, why are there mornings?”

The rock under her cheek moved and Porthos rumbled, “Why did we not do this in a bed?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Why do I smell sausages?” The rich fatty aroma and the hiss and crackle of their cooking pulled her upright.

Aramis, fully dressed, turned his head from where he squatted by the hearth, toasting the sausages over the last bright coals. The only mark of the day before was a bruise on his temple. “Morning,” he said cheerfully, plating the food and passing it to her. “Eat up, we're on duty in an hour.” Laying out another round of sausages he began to whistle a merry tune.

Athos groaned and dragged a cushion over his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Porthos: one of nature's sergeants. 
> 
> D'Artagnan isn't good with feelings. Come to think of it, neither are Athos and Aramis. 
> 
> Potter’s field - a graveyard for paupers. It's a reference to the death of Judas - when he killed himself he willed the thirty pieces of silver to a charitable group, who used it to buy “the potter's field” for the burial of those who couldn't afford to buy their own graves.


	10. "Don't get involved!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: Unintended innuendo, minor harassment, non-graphic sexy-times, referenced canon infidelity. Set a little before 1.06.

In the fog of early morning Constance and d'Artagnan tripped through the streets. It was the best time to go to market, especially for fish, and indeed d'Artagnan carried a large wicker basket with the villainous head of a lamprey poking out. But she carried two swords, one slung on a baldric over her shoulder, and Constance's cheeks were flushed from more than the walk.

D'Artagnan gestured with her free hand as they walked. “It's not a flick, but you don't whack it either. No carpet beaters, Constance. Most of it's in the wrist, I swear - why are you giggling?”

“No reason.” Constance tucked a curl of auburn hair behind her ear and let d'Artagnan shield her from the puddle-spray of a passing cart with her leather cloak.

D'Artagnan shook her head sadly. _"Parisians."_

They turned into the court the Bonacieux house faced on and another early riser, a lady of iron-grey hair pinned back into fierce respectability, stared at them from over her lofty nose before sniffing and turning her back - to hang up laundry, of course.

Constance's eyes narrowed.

“What was that about?” asked d’Artagnan, mystified.

“She’s been making up stories about me since I first moved here,” answered Constance. “I'm sure she'll spin a good one today.” Her crimson lips flattened.

D'Artagnan frowned. “If our lessons - if I'm causing you trouble…”

 _“Don't you dare back out,”_ hissed Constance.

 

**

 

Aramis and his lover of the evening lay on her bed, curled into each other like two salt-marked fish in a starry sign, and set all about were little lights. Breathing deeply, Aramis took up a lock of the lady's stormy hair and wound it around his finger.

She stroked her hand along his collarbone, and as his eyes slid half shut slipped one finger under the chains about his neck - the dark curlicued links of the old and the brighter links of the gift from the queen. “It is almost a challenge,” she said, weighing the heavy gold cross in her hand and turning it so that it caught sparks from the candles. “There is an urge to weigh you down with jewels, my young man.”

He covered cross and hand with his own.

“The Chevalier d’Bracieux is calling tomorrow even,” she said abruptly. His eyelids lowered briefly in acknowledgement.

“You won't fuss?" She smiled crookedly, "But then, you never do.”

“That you have taken another lover? I would not spoil a thing of beauty,” he answered easily. “We have had our fun, have we not? I can go on my way and wish you all delight.”

“What does it take to touch you, I wonder?”

He rose up on the bed. “This,” he murmured, lowering his head.

She breathed in sharply, _ha._ “So… gracious, my dear one. I… before you make me forget, on the… table in the hall is a last present. A nice one.”

“Enough talking,” he answered, a growl in his throat.

 

**

 

“So, you and the Cardinal's mistress…?” The question floated lazily in the afternoon air.

Aramis rode silently for a handful of breaths. “A bird long since flown,” he remarked. And, “Someone's been _chatty_.”     

“It was Porthos,” said d’Artagnan hurriedly, “and I don't think you can thrash him.” His black eyes slid to the side. “If I gossip out of turn you can thrash _me_. But I won't.” She gestured at the empty country hedgerows. “See? I'm asking _discreetly_.”

His mouth quirked.

“She decided to follow the money,” he said. “I do not mean that in a deprecatory sense,” he clarified, glancing at d'Artagnan. “People like what they like.”

He cocked his head thoughtfully. “And there was fondness there too, I think. A forceful personality can be… alluring.” D’Artagnan looked horrified, and then somewhat thoughtful.

“She was fond of games,” Aramis mused. Games with words, games with danger, games with sharp, intimate things. “Unlettered, witty, quite spectacularly vulgar at times, avaricious…”

“Was there anything you actually _liked_ about her?” D’Artagnan had one sooty eyebrow  raised in a quizzical fashion.

Aramis blinked in surprise. “Liked? I _adored_ her.” He could feel his face softening and cursed his lack of composure. “Well and so. I only hope she's happy.”

D’Artagnan hummed in her throat as their horses paced along. As a tall, red-roofed church came in view, she asked, “So why do you think the Cardinal's so interested in this baby.”

“All I know is it's our job to collect the infant and its mother and take them back to Paris. That's it.”

“You’re not curious?"

“Not at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If he wasn't in love with her Aramis can be sincerely happy that Adele - as far as he knows - is doing well with a wealthy patron instead of hurt that she ditched him without even a goodbye note. So much more pleasant, not being in love. As an aside, I can't pin down Aramis' type, since he seems to like them feisty (Adele, Isabelle, Constance, Ninon, Maria Bonnaire) and then gets all sweet on demure types like Anne and Agnes. He has a large heart, maybe?
> 
> There was almost an aside wherein Aramis and Adele used the Cardinal's personal flogger/instrument of correction as a sex toy, which would have been dirty-bad-wrong and made me feel sorry for the old guy, but I had to conclude that the Aramis I'm writing wasn't that much of a blasphemous shit. So, and so.
> 
> We didn't see much of Adele, but I like to think she would have been a bit like Nellie Gwyn - a bit common, a lot smart, and possessed of a forceful personality. A season one where she was alive and in an uneasy triangle with the Cardinal and Aramis would have been pretty interesting, though I suspect it would still have ended badly.


	11. “We all have our secrets and hidden emotions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over ten thousand words - woo!

Riding away from the milestone to Avalon, where the marker brazier still smoked and Agnes held her young son, Constance's arms felt cold and empty. Athos glanced at her. “I am sorry,” he said simply.

She stirred against the sway of her borrowed horse, still feeling the curve of little Henri’s head in her hand, and the milk-sweet smell of him. He had been a charming baby to watch over. “It isn't your fault,” she answered.

“Nevertheless, I am sorry.”  

A few yards behind, Aramis sidled his horse close beside d'Artagnan's, enough that he could feel the warmth of her leg against his.

“You've been holding out on me,” he breathed in her ear.

D'Artagnan twitched. “What? No I haven't. Uh.”    

He grinned like a fox, and she shivered. It was a cool morning. Then Aramis nodded ahead to Constance, patted the coils of his sword-hilt, and nodded significantly.

“Oh,” said d’Artagnan, “that. It wasn’t my secret to tell,” she added simply.

He nodded.

“So, er, how did she do?”

“Awful,” he answered. “Got knocked all about the room. No sense of the flow of the fight. Held it like a carpet-beater.”

“Oh,” said d’Artagnan, hunching her shoulders.

“Killed her man,” he went on, “in a fair fight, without a scratch to show for it, and him a veteran soldier.”

“That’s my girl,” breathed d'Artagnan, a smile growing on her wide mouth and her eyes growing soft and fond.

He smiled himself. “Not a drop of hesitation, either. I've seen a lot of younger soldiers freeze, in the first real fight. How long have you been teaching her?”

“Three months,” said d’Artagnan, with an air of nonchalance. Aramis whistled appreciatively. Constance looked back at the sound, her breath steaming in the cool of the morning, and Aramis smiled and waved, wiggling his fingers. Her fine eyebrows quirked together in puzzlement, then she smiled and shook her head, turning back to Athos.

“What?” Aramis asked to d'Artagnan's sudden glower, “I'm not going to poach your first student. Firsts are _sacred._ ” The girl continued to stare at him. “There are some drills you might try - she lacks your arm length and I doubt she'll ever be as strong; it makes a difference. But you're doing well so far.”  D’Artagnan harrumphed a little, then nodded, kicking her horse ahead. Aramis allowed himself a huff of quiet laughter. 

“Is it Charlotte or Charlain?” asked Porthos softly, as he rode up from behind.

Aramis smiled, watching d'Artagnan reach Constance and Athos and charge head first into their conversation. “I've no idea.” Then, "When did you pick it?"

"You weren't exactly subtle with that neckerchief way back when we met,” said Porthos. “An' the hips, they do not lie. Even a bean-stalk like d'Artagnan throws different than a bloke would."

"I bow to your expertise as a wrestler."

Ahead, Athos hunched under his fine-feathered hat as d'Artagnan pinwheeled her lanky arms, trusting her horse to ride to her knees, and Constance laughed. The two women made a pretty couple, Aramis thought. They were good together. It was truly a marvellous day, where the pieces of family had been reunited, and Agnes would soon be winging her way to an old... friend in Spain who understood discretion and needed a French maid. Happy endings abounded. He sighed. 

“You know she's gotta be thinking of her career, right? Even taking a few months off to pop out a sprog and foster it out would kill it dead.”

"Yes exactly," said Aramis patiently, "Which is why I'm strictly hands off in my dealings."

Porthos howled with laughter. Aramis shoved him with his shoulder. Porthos shoved back and Aramis grabbed for him. When they hit the ground the others all turned, their horses’ heads tossing and their mouths a row of ‘O’s.

Athos shut his eyes. “Mornings,” he muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't but feel that Constance, pretty, feisty, and unhappily married, would be like catnip to Aramis were she not so obviously smitten with d'Artagnan. 
> 
> _Agnes would soon be winging her way to an old... friend_ \- this is what Aramis did for a young woman in desperate straits in the book, and seems less likely to end in disaster than sending a woman and baby, with a small bag of pennies, alone into a country where she doesn't speak the language and there's prejudice against French people. So this is my head canon. 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	12. “I want to see how this plays out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed to write something that wasn't soul-crushing, for a bit. This chapter dedicated to Daisy Ninja Girl, who wanted something at a literary salon.

“Not me, brother,” said Porthos. “I'm already posted at the Louvre.”

“I want no part in this,” said Athos, stalking away.

Aramis turned to their newest member, so young, so dewy-eyed, and smiled with all his teeth. “D'Artagnan! You're just the man I was looking for. Put on a clean shirt - I will lend you a clean shirt - and come along!”

D’Artagnan followed obediently until they reached the door of a magnificent house in the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and then asked, “What's the mission?”

“One that requires my specialised skills,” said Aramis, smiling. “Don't fret about Athos, he just gets a little shy when he can't fight, snarl, or drink his way through awkward moments. You'll be fine.” He slung a companionable arm around d'Artagnan's bony shoulders. “I'm well known here,” he added. “I trust you won't embarrass me.” His hand on her shoulder tightened.

D’Artagnan nodded vigorously. “But, where are we going?”

“To an intimate gathering,” said Aramis, smiling. “In a lady's private chambers.”

“Uh -”

Aramis announced them at the door.     

 

**

 

D'Artagnan stood bolt upright and jittered as she told the others what had happened, while Athos and Porthos slouched against a wooden table in the garrison courtyard.

Athos' eyes narrowed at d'Artagnan's manner.

“Trouble at the salon?” asked Porthos.

“Nn-o,” said d’Artagnan cautiously. “We found the Italian lady he was looking for almost straight away.” She waved a hand. “Stuff happened. It went alright. But then, Madame de Rambouillet asked Aramis what he thought of the latest volume of _Cythérée_ and then they… they talked about books for hours. They just sat there! Sitting! And talking! Sitting and talking! I thought maybe they were hinting around and about something else, like the novel was a code, but Porthos,” she gripped the man's coat, “there was no code.

“And they kept bringing around these trays of dainties - well they weren't so bad except for the marzipan - but those dainty little chairs with all the gilt, and I had to sit so still, like on parade but not nearly so comfortable, and every time I twitched the chair squeaked and Aramis glared at me like I'd insulted his priest and his eyes, they're like _knives.”_

“Aramis takes his salons very seriously,” said Athos gravely.

“And his salonieres,” added Porthos.

"D'Artagnan did very well, " Aramis soothed, as he came down the stairs from Treville’s office. "The ladies thought he was a little raw, but promising. We'll make an _honnête homme_ of you yet," he added, grinning.   
  
"A lady hit me with her fan."   
  
"That shows she likes you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sitting still is not where d'Artagnan's strength lies.
> 
> ++
> 
> In a lady's private chambers - the internet tells me that in the 1630s salons tended to take place in smaller rooms, sometimes in a bedroom with the saloniere (hostess) reclining on the bed while her guests sat around - it fostered an atmosphere of intimacy. They also strongly favoured conversation, where everyone has a voice, over rhetoric, with the crowd listening to one speaker. Ninon’s salon was atypical for its day. I kind of get why they did that - one woman giving a speech is easier to film than a gathering having a spirited conversation (and it's not like the regiment of musketeers does anything but stand in the background, or we see courtiers having opinions) but, eh, it would have been nice. Here's a link : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hôtel_de_Rambouillet
> 
> “Aramis takes his salons very seriously” - In the books he's explicitly written as going to them, catching up on gossip, and messing with politics and intrigue. Different as the show character is, Aramis is still someone Ninon knows by reputation. 
> 
> honnête homme - literally, an ‘honest man’, refers to an ideal promoted in the salons: refined, courteous, eloquent, gallant - honest in the sense of doing the right thing, as opposed to brutal honesty.


	13. "Now that's the way to make an entrance."

Aramis cracked one eye open. By the grey half-light seeping through curtained windows he had for once defeated his old enemy: sleeping in. He eased from under the arm slung over his ribs and slithered from the feather-mattressed bed onto a tiled floor. Hissing at the chill under his feet he half-hopped around the room, eventually finding his clothes on a curve-backed chair under a collection of leather straps that did not, as it happened, belong to him. He dressed in silence, missing one long sock; the woman on the bed snored gently, smiling secretly.  He tiptoed, boots in hand, to the half open bedroom door.

There was a dog in it, watching him.

Aramis put a finger to his lips as the dog cocked its little head. “Sh, sh, sh,” he murmured, waving his hands. He eased forward and it growled a little. Two more little dogs trotted over, their nails clicking on the tiles. Aramis backed into the room. The dogs followed, joined by another with a turned-out ear. He circled the bed, almost tripping as a fifth dog emerged from under the bed with his missing sock draped over its back. “Ah, thank you,” he murmured, reaching for it. The little dog snapped at his hand, its white teeth clashing. “You are no gentleman!” he whispered harshly.

 The woman on the bed smiled, the sleep still crusted in her eyes. “Come back to bed,” she said, her voice low and husky.

Aramis leaned over her and kissed her on the cheek. She curled her fingers around his wrist. “Duty calls,” he said apologetically, and tugged gently free. “Tomorrow night, perhaps?”

She pouted. “That’s when Fontaine comes to visit.”

“Ah, well,” he apologised, “who am I to interfere with such bliss?”

One little dog started barking, its stubby tail wagging, joined by another, and yet another, a riotous chorus for the young morning. Aramis winced. “Au revoir, madame.”

He jumped out the window.

 

**

 

 

The plane tree was raining footwear. D'Artagnan tugged her earlobe thoughtfully then nudged her horse forwards. Girasol, a thoughtful sort of creature, clopped towards it affably enough, as a belt slithered down from a leafy branch. Hand on sword-hilt, she searched the windows of the sandy grey building - it was late for housebreaking, but…

Then a great weight landed behind her. Girasol, possessed of some sensibility, expressed his indignation with a series of small bucks. D'Artagnan swore, half reining in the horse, half trying to draw the dagger sheathed at the small of her back. Whoever was behind her clung to the horse with legs like steel bands, hands gripping her hips for balance. “For shame,” the man behind her whispered. “A musketeer not prepared for every eventuality?”

She swore. “Damn you, Aramis.”  

“Shall we go to breakfast before muster? My treat.”

Girasol, apparently done with fidgets for the morning, settled down and stood stolidly as she used her sheathed sword to fish up the stray gear. With some complicated wriggles Aramis got his feet booted and the belt buckled without ever giving up his seat. D'Artagnan rolled her eyes, and nudged the horse into a walk, Aramis' hands again warm on her hips. It was pleasant. “I was going to invite you to a chocolate breakfast, myself,” she said. “There's an Abbe I know, from Gascony, asked me along.” She waved an expressive hand. “I know you like chocolate.”

 Aramis leaned forward. “D'Artagnan,” he asked seriously, “are you blackmailing the good Abbe?”

 D’Artagnan guffawed. “He's my father's second cousin. Which makes us…” she trailed off, put off at the calculation.     

 Aramis tensed. “Is someone in town knowing your family going to be a problem for you?”

 “He helped me forge my new birth certificate.” She laughed again. “Not so much blackmail as the inconvenience of sending the poor unmarriageable maiden back to the provinces. We compromised on forgery and the occasional breakfast. So he can keep a pastorly eye on my poor straying soul, you understand.”

She felt him relax behind her. "It's just that Constance would beat me if you got into trouble," he said, affecting a plaintive note.

D'Artagnan snickered and elbowed him in the ribs. “I'm old enough and ugly enough -"

“That joke’s getting tired,” said Aramis, oddly irritable.

"Peace," she said, raising her free hand. "I'll pick a new one. Anyway, I'm twenty in a week."

"Then we shall bow to your great wisdom," he said sonorously. "At your birthday celebration."

"No melons!" she said, alarmed, and felt his silent laughter against the back of her neck. Dammit.

“Was that the house of the pretty Marquise?”

“Hm?" said Aramis, surprised. "Oh no, she retired to the country with her spectacular chaperone. They'll do well together, I think.”

D’Artagnan was silent a moment and then said cautiously, “You make it sound like she ran off with a lover.”

“Well... yes?”

“... oh, right. That's something women can do… somehow.”

Aramis thought, with nostalgia, of the time he himself had been an innocent provincial, eyes fresh opening to the flesh pots of Paris, trying simply to fathom the logistics of how people fit together.

“So… all this time, _you_ were the chaperone for _them?_ ”

“Something like that.” He grinned at the back of her head. “Things are easier for the nobility, but it still helps to have a layer of plausible deniability.”

“Were they paying you?”

“Only in strawberries.”  The question hung in the air. “D'Artagnan,” he said, almost harshly, “I am quite capable of being friends with a woman, without expectation of reward or… physical release.”

“Of course you are!” she said hurriedly.

“I like women,” he said. “It really is as simple as that. I like pretty things, and I like people who like pretty things, and I like people who _are_ pretty things. I like rooms that don't smell of horseshit and bacon, and conversations that toss a beribboned ball back and forth instead of one cockerel climbing to the top of a dungheap and defending it against all comers. I like talking to women, I like pleasing women -”

“You like it when they smack you around.”

“On occasion,” he allowed. “And I can do a favour for a friend.”

A thought struck him, then: “So you and Constance aren't…?”

A shake of the head.

“Is that something you might like to try, someday?”

Another head shake. “No,” said d’Artagnan thoughtfully. “I adore Constance, she's so brave and bright. I love her like burning. But I don't burn _for_ her, if you see what I mean.”    

Aramis took his hands off her hips. As he rested them on his thighs instead the horse beneath them jittered, and d'Artagnan busied herself shortening the reins and walking Girasol in a circle until he calmed.

“You're positively missish,” she said at last. “Shall I protest that your virtue is safe with me?”

“If I have perhaps been giving the wrong impression...” he said cautiously to the back of her sleek head.

“You haven't,” she snapped. “It's quite clear I'm no fair maiden for the wooing.”   

He stirred. “I... think it might be better were I to make my own way home.”

“Too late.” D’Artagnan drew her horse to a stop by a quiet house with flower boxes on either side of the door. “We're here,” she said, swinging her leg over Girasol’s head and sliding off.  She slung his reins around a tying-post. “Are you coming or not?” she said over her shoulder, and stalked inside.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Five very annoying dogs…” - 1.08
> 
> The Gascon clergyman and his chocolate-breakfast comes from the book. I have no idea what such a thing actually entails. Except, presumably, for chocolate. I borrowed Aramis jumping on the back of d'Art’s horse from 20YA. 
> 
> There's being stuck in the friend zone (which can be a pretty nifty place, I mean seriously) and then there's being suddenly shoved into the I-don’t-quite-trust-you-not-to-make-things-weird zone, a much chillier area. Poor d'Artagnan.
> 
> (I noticed when writing this chapter that I've put in a lot of scenes with people talking front-to-back in a kind of standing or sitting spoon. It's, er, symbolic. Of something. I'll tell you what of when I figure it out myself. )


	14. "You don't understand, I'm not looking for absolution."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Into every romantic comedy a time of distress, anxiety, and miscommunication must fall. We have reached that time. 
> 
> CW: A (very little) 'bad' language. People saying harsh things to each other, sometimes intentionally. Drunkenness. Reference to canon substance abuse. Athos/Manpain.

_PatpatpatCLASH_

Athos pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do I even want to know?”

Porthos tore off a piece of bread. “I don't have a clue either. Maybe the chocolate didn't agree with ‘em.”  

_PatpatpatCLASH_

Athos glanced over the balcony and winced. “The boy needs to work on that temper of his.”

Porthos laughed. “D'Artagnan’s working on it plenty.”

_PatpatpatCLASHtching!_

On the training ground below d'Artagnan stalked angrily to the wall and pried out her sword where it, sent flying by a disarming manoevre, had sunk an inch deep in the wood. In the centre of the ground Aramis, impeccable in a blue training gambeson, said a few courteous words in correction of her technique then crossed his blades in a brief salute before her oncoming charge.

_PatpatpatCLASH_

Athos tasted the words carefully. “It has been a week, now. Should I… intervene?”

Porthos shrugged. “These things have a way of working themselves out. Tell you what, you take Aramis out and, I dunno, decline your Latin or whatever; I'll drag the kid off drinking. Something’ll shake loose.”

Athos raised a speaking eyebrow. Porthos raised his hands, “Maybe it’s conjugate, defenestrate? One o’ those. Me and d'Artagnan can play cards - it'll be fun.”

_PatpatpatCLASH..._

 

**

 

“I am supposed to be giving you advice,” Athos announced, his enunciation, as ever, pure and clear, despite the oceans of strong wine he had taken in that night. Aramis tightened his arm around the other man's waist as they veered around a reeking puddle. He'd had but a drop compared to Athos, but his own relationship with the ground was itself very shaky. “I have no advice,” Athos continued, “for I do not even know why you are unhappy.”

“I am not unhappy,” Aramis answered.     

“Yes, you are,” said Athos, “for the line between your brows is back, the same as when I have been drinking too much.”

“You _have_ been drinking too -”

“You think I do not notice but I do, every time,” Athos said, "and I poison myself anyway. I have realised that I am a tick!" he orated grandly. "You should find a better friend for I take and I take and give nothing back."

"Are my affections things to be paid for?" said Aramis lightly.

"You sell your affections all the time."

Aramis stopped. He knew better than to take to heart the words of a drunken man. Certainly he'd never thought less of those he'd given coin: for a night of hedonism, a night of skin against skin, a night of holding someone close enough to feel their breath.  Love is rarely pure, never simple, and neither is money, but they dance well enough together. His own blurred dealings with wealthy patrons had been entirely satisfactory to all concerned parties. And yet, tonight Athos' words hurt.

"They do not take you at your worth," said Athos earnestly. "They should respect you more."

"Then let me spend my affections where I may."

“I am supposed to be giving you advice…” Athos repeated.  

 

**

 

On the rue de Vaugirard D'Artagnan knocked at the door, light sparks of drizzle falling on her heated face. The walk had cleared her head some, though she still felt light-headed, not so much from the wine, as from talking the whole mess of it over with Porthos. His words sounded again in her ears. _Be honest about your feelings,_ he'd said. _Never raise your voice. ‘No’ means ‘no’. And good luck!_ The door to Aramis’ apartment opened and Aramis stood at the top of the steps. He looked weary, but he smiled slightly as he looked down at her.

“I've done nothing wrong,” she blurted out.

“No, you haven't,” he agreed.

“Have I played the coquette?” she demanded. “Batted my eyelids at you? Made remarks of a salacious and unwanted nature? Let my hands creep where hands should not be?”

The faint smile vanished. “Indeed you have not,” he replied. “The inappropriate crossing of boundaries was on my part entirely and I beg your forgiveness for it.”  

The calmness of his response only made her belly roil. “Ah, but I forgot,” she said, her voice sweet as dark honey, “you don't do virgins. Tell me, Aramis my friend - if I went out to the docks and bled for a sailor, would that suddenly make me nubile for you?”

“Don't go down to the docks,” he said wearily. “Christ. At least half of them have the pox. And, not everything is about _you_.”

“No, it's about wealthy older women draping you in jewels,” she said tartly. “If I were rich, Aramis, dear Aramis, would you be running from my raging quim?”

He shut his eyes briefly. “I think you have been drinking a little much,” he said, opening them. “I'll walk you home, if you want.”

“I _want_ my friend back!”  

“I think you want a little more than that,” he said gently.

D'Artagnan raised her chin. In the humid night air the scarf around her neck seemed to choke her. “And what if I do? Should I bring you strawberries?”

He smiled tightly. “Maybe I don't want to be your dildo.”

“What's a dildo?” asked d’Artagnan blankly.

“Perhaps it will come to you. Good night, d'Artagnan.” Aramis shut the door.

She stared at the wood blankly for several minutes and then kicked a step as hard as she could. “Ow.”

It started to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to get the next chapter out in a couple of days. 
> 
> Lesson learned: never ask for or expect relationship advice from Athos because it always goes badly. Also, don't insult the sexual morals of someone you're trying to get into bed with. That's just... not good.


	15. "Any man can tell a woman she is beautiful..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just... couldn't keep you hanging. Almost to the end!

Late as it was, well after midnight, a soft light still glowed through the cracks in Aramis’ shutters. D’Artagnan slipped through the gap in the hedge and shook the rain out of her hair before tapping on the inner, garden door. She pondered the merits of staying on the steps in the manner of a half-drowned puppy, which Constance had claimed was near irresistible and should be ruled illegal in the city court. She sneezed, and sneezed again. Perhaps the rain would drown her by morning and wash her away to be found in the Seine and her body could be fished out as a lesson to the young and choleric. Though the young and melancholic would be better, on account of the sogginess. After an age the door opened. Aramis had hung up his coat and set his boots on a jack but was otherwise fully dressed. The light behind him threw his face into obscurity.

 _Oh hell_ , thought d’Artagnan, _words_.

"I am an ass,” she said in a rush. "But if you tell me to go I'll go.”

He said nothing, eyes hidden.

“I went and asked Celestina what a dildo was and she laughed at me then offered to find me a good one. Um. I might take her up on that someday.”

Silence. A drop of water slipped from the eaves overhead and plopped smugly on her bare head.

“I never meant to make you feel like a thing to scratch an itch with,” she said. “I was angry - very angry - but I never meant that and I'm sorry.”  

"Don't fret,” said Aramis, resting a hand on the door frame. "I've heard it before.” He smiled wryly and held up his other hand, forefinger and thumb close together. “And I may have been a _little_ … over sensitive, earlier.”

“You're so tidy,” she said in a rush.

“Thank you?”

“Tidy and clean,” she went on. “It's hard to tell when you're bleeding.”

“I’m not bleeding, d'Artagnan.”   

She hesitated, and said in a small voice. "I don't know how to make things right.”

Aramis stepped back. D’Artagnan tensed to catch the door before it shut but let her hand fall back. But Aramis disappeared inside the house only to return with a soft flannel towel in his hand, which he promptly threw over d’Artagnan's head. "Come in,” he said, "you'll catch cold.”

"People can die from colds," said d’Artagnan, muffled under the towel. “I've seen it happen. Or they get the rheumatism.”

"Well," and she heard the smile in his voice now, "I am something of a medical expert.”

 

**

 

Aramis cracked two brown eggs into a white-glazed bowl and whisked them briskly with fortified wine and a few precious grains of cinnamon and nutmeg. When the cream he'd been warming foamed into a boil he poured it in from a height, still stirring, and then let the mixture settle in two porcelain mugs.

“I'm not a sick child,” grumbled d'Artagnan, sounding very much like a sick child as she wrapped her long brown fingers around the posset-mug and lifted the spout to her lips.

“Humour me,” said Aramis, flashing a quick smile, “for I always come down with colds at this time of year, and Porthos claims I become insufferable with the whining.”

“Mother of God,” she complained, “is it always so damp in Paris?”

“No,” Aramis said brightly, “sometimes it floods.”

She snickered, and dug a spoon into the foamy grace of the posset with the energy of the young and hungry. She had doffed her neckerchief and loosened her breast-bindings, as she so often did at his house. When she set the mug to one side and tilted back her head her neck rose like a bird’s from the open collar of her shirt and the soft brown leather of her jerkin. Slouched gangling on his settle, the light of his fire made the long lines of her a figure cast in bronze: Atalanta the runner, reclining after a victorious boar hunt and far too proud for golden apples.  

In the warmth and the quiet he almost told her of his own first, Isabelle fair and fine, the smartest girl in his catechism class. Isabelle whom he still dreamed of finding one day - just turn a corner and there she is, maybe, someday… But not even to d'Artagnan could he give the child, and that was that.

D’Artagnan stretched her feet to the little fire. Even in the muggy heat of the season it was a comfort. “You shouldn't be so nice to me,” she said seriously. “I'll never learn any better.” She heard him move around the room, and then a low scrape as he pulled up a chair.

He dragged his hands through his dark hair, and then said, “Can you tell me about it?”

“It's… I…” D'Artagnan looked away.  “I'm not made for farming,” she said at last.  “I don't match with the seasons, sprouting young plants fills me with boredom, and the yearly hay mow, it's the wrong kind of backbreaking. I loved my father, but I couldn't follow him. And the wifing business - I'd be even worse. Not that there were any prospects in that line,” she said, the low drawl of her voice wry. “There's a bit of good blood on my mother's side, but no money to spare. Especially not after taxes. The rustic society of Gascony plots marital alliances as carefully as the royal court and I, the horse-tall willful daughter of d'Artagnan, well, I'd gotten myself a reputation.

“And then I came to Paris,” she said, waving her long arms. Aramis caught the empty mug she knocked with her elbow. “Here everything I am becomes… _useful._ I'm strong, aren't I? Fast? I have a wrist of steel and the nerve to use it. I'm not a Musketeer yet, but… I think I could be.” Her eyes sought Aramis’ and he nodded slightly. “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.” She looked away. “And all it cost was my father's life.” She shook herself. “Yes, well.”

She rubbed her eyes. “There are ways to be touched, as a man with a woman. And, right now, it is hard for me to find that.

“I jest about my friend at the brothel and the Gascony Abbe, but the circle of people who know what I don't keep in my breeches is already too large.” She touched her bare throat and swallowed, thinking of Milady de Winter and her smiles. “If word gets out, the Cardinal would use it as a rod to beat the Regiment’s back and I won't do it, not to Treville and not to you.  

“When you swear off something, when you tell yourself that you won't have that thing… don't you start to crave it?” She looked up and Aramis was smiling, but his eyes were very sad. She traced the lines of the necklaces he wore with her eyes and wondered again at the glint of gold of the little cross he always carried. “I'm so greedy,” she said, flatly, “all this I have and yet I want more.”

“I find,” he said then, looking away, “the concept that I might have a stranglehold on what's between your legs to be… distasteful.”

“You don't,” she said, voice dropping. “I make my own choices.”   

“What do you want from me?” he asked gently.

“One night. With you. With a _friend_ , to find out what I'm missing. To feel desired if only once in my life.” She bit her lip. It sounded so lurid when said aloud, so awash with self-pity. She heard the rustle of his clothes.

“It doesn't have to be me,” he said. “Porthos is a gentle and considerate lover. A- a number of men of my acquaintance could see you through a pleasant night and breakfast in the morning, with no entanglements after.”

“But I don't… _want…_ Porthos _.”_

“So,” he breathed. “And we understand each other.” She squeezed her eyes shut and felt a fool again. “What do you need from me?” she heard him say, his voice low and mellow and rich.

“Just for you to hear me say that, just once.” She raised her eyes. “And I need you to be my friend again.”

He reached forward and laced his fingers through her hair, tracing the shape of her skull. Shivers ran down her spine. “You are lovely,” he said seriously. “I have much experience in these matters and my judgement is to be trusted. And I desire you.”

She shut her eyes again. “And somehow it isn't going to be that simple, is it?” She heard the rustle of his clothes, smelt the spice and gunpowder of him, felt his lips brush her forehead. Felt the warmth of him pull away.

“You are my junior in the regiment by a significant span of years. That alone should -” he shook himself. “There are reasons I look for my jacks elsewhere.”

“That is a virtuous reason,” she said dryly, “though the notion you might have seduced or coerced me is laughable. But I think, I think it is more that you are afraid of falling in love.”

He smiled crookedly. “Fire, screams, and blood on the floor,” he said.

“Your ordinary day,” she echoed and startled a laugh out of him. She went on, “I could promise not to love you but you are already wrapped around my heart, you and Porthos and Athos. Even gruff old Treville. I don't want a love story either,” she said frankly. “Just friendship. And maybe getting my ashes hauled now and then.”  

“I will think about it,” he said seriously.

“Are we friends?” she said, her voice small.

“Always.”       

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wine posset - of the family of eggnog, though it seems like it would have been a bit more custard-trifly. A proper posset-mug comes with a spout so you can drink the spiced wine at the bottom while spooning up the froth and custard floating on top. I'm not a drinker, but damn I want to try it. It's medicinal! - http://arrowheadwine.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/sack-posset.html
> 
> Atalanta the runner - one of the ancient Greek heroes. Grew up wild suckled by bears, took first blood in hunting a Wild Boar of Epic, might have sailed on the Argo. Also known for losing a footrace by being distracted by the old golden apple gambit. (Since losing the race meant marriage with someone she appeared to like, it's possible she, hum, let herself be distracted.) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atalanta
> 
> You are my junior in the regiment by a significant span of years. That alone should -” - For the record I have no problem with 'd'Artagnan falls cheerfully into bed with one of the older musketeers' stories, none at all. This just turned into a fic exploring potential problems, so there it is. If we go by the battles Aramis mentioned being at in 1.01, he'd been in the army a good nine or ten years by the start of the show, minimum. So: seniority, maturity, age difference... Also - he'd been a very pretty, sexually active man in the army a good nine or ten years. If he hadn't found himself leaned on by a bad apple of an unscrupulous senior officer, I'd bet good money he'd seen it happen to someone else. So, and so, and an ethical hedonist might well step very carefully around the young'ns. 
> 
> Gah, that ended on a depressing note. I'm off to find a one-or-two person version of the posset recipe...


	16. "... the world can blossom like a flower."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a little before 1.08 The Challenge.

It was not, as happens, a matter of great moment, or a moment of great matter when it happened. One night they were alone in his rooms, when the roar of the city and the horseplay of those who kept quarters at the garrison had offended both their ears - a different kind of noise from a country night for d’Artagnan, and Aramis had a refined and delicate soul, anyone could tell you that.

D’Artagnan looked up from the little table she'd commandeered, laid out with feathers and several reels of coloured thread, and paused with a half-wound fishing lure in her hands. From his chair near the fire, Aramis was watching her, still and calm, his eyes on the deft, sure movement of her fingers. They moved up to the line of her bare throat, and then met her own eyes.

She waggled her eyebrows in inquiry.

Aramis said delicately, “That matter we discussed earlier.” What was in his eyes was not delicate at all, though whether it was the lure or the hook d’Artagnan really could not say. "If it is still a thing that might please.”

"Does it please?” d'Artagnan rubbed her chin thoughtfully where the bristles would never grow. "I wouldn't want to put you out,” she said, wide-eyed and earnest. “I mean, Celestina said the shipment was coming in any day now...”  

"Who am I to interfere with a lady’s plans? I still have a good book to pass the evening,” Aramis said cheerfully, displaying the item in question. "The plot is most engrossing.”

D’Artagnan said something, in Gascon, so her companion was forced to guess the meaning. He didn't try.

Aramis put down his book and leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs. In one swift movement d’Artagnan straddled his thighs. When he settled his hands at her waist she jumped slightly. He moved his hands away and cocked one eyebrow. "Alright?” She caught his hands and set them back at the dip of her waist, ducking her head forward to kiss his nose. He grinned.

 

**

 

In a calm and blessedly rain free morning, Aramis leaned against the headboard of his bed, comfortable and easy in the pool of early morning sunshine. D’Artagnan, a warm weight settled between his legs, reclined her long body against his chest, the ends of her black hair brushing against his collarbone when she tipped back her head. He nuzzled the join where long neck met lithe shoulder and she breathed in sharply. "Tickles!” Then, "I didn't say stop.”

He eyed the angle of the sunlight and whispered, low and sweet in her ear, “Muster in thirty.” D’Artagnan swore. He stroked his hand down her flank, light and warm.

"You touch your horse like that," she remarked, resting her brown hand on his forearm and rubbing it with her thumb.

"Fidget is also a very dear Iady.”

She digested that briefly, and then remarked, "I hope not dear in quite the same way.”

Aramis sputtered, and he felt her ribs shiver under his hand as she laughed silently. He rested on one elbow when she bounced upright and watched lazily as she whirled about the room, hauling out his washbowl for a hurried wipedown with a cloth and fishing out her gear: linen and breeches and jacket and sword belt. Neckerchief.

"Alright?” she asked, one eyebrow lifted, as she hopped into one of her boots.

He let his smile grow. "This isn't a love story,” he warned again.

''Absolutely not,” she agreed. Then her solemnity toppled and she flashed a wide grin. "Muster in twenty,” she said, and clattered out the door.

Aramis knew a shortcut to the garrison. He gave himself another five minutes of lying warm and boneless in the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to any readers who were expecting more angsty impassioned bits. Sometimes it really is as simple as two people who trust each other deciding to have a fling. It's a love story for aromantics, I guess?
> 
> The two prompts that sparked this were a) a request for girl!d'Artagnan/Aramis, first time, and b) the premise that Aramis kept his sleeping around restricted to wives, widows, and women in the sex trade because the consequences of a gently-reared young maiden getting caught out before marriage were rather dire. They kept bouncing off each other and I found myself wondering how they could fit together. Then they roped in Aramis' past with Isabelle and what he will get up to with Marguerite, not to mention the queen, and it was all on. (I apologise for the lack of smut at the end. Anyone who wants to take their own crack at the prompts has my full support.) 
> 
> Exploring d'Artagnan as a 'mannish' young woman was rather fun. To me, d'Art wouldn't be d'Art if not fast-paced, aggressive, and occasionally an ass to people s/he has the hots for. And Aramis wouldn't be Aramis if he weren't elegant, prone to keeping secrets from his nearest and dearest, lethal, and... nice. (Hell, even the slick intriguer of the books uses his Power of Social Connections for the greater good of his buddies and descendants.) Playing them off against stereotypical gender roles was also interesting.
> 
> Aaaaaaanyway, what I ended up with was a story of living with secrets, of intimacy, where whom you sleep with isn't necessarily as important as whom you trust. A love story for aromantics. 
> 
> I hope it pleases.
> 
> On to the post 1.10 epilogue!


	17. "Never make it a love story..."

_ A man sat in a room, reading a book in soft amber light. Rain drummed on the roof and walls. There had been a knock at the door. _

The chill rain fell on and on, incessant and wearying. Aramis turned a page, then another, but the novel was dry and pointless, chapter after chapter of an errant knight failing either to return home or reach his lady-love. He rubbed a thumb over the inscription on the flyleaf, shut the book with a snap, and reached for the kit where he kept his needles, his thread and tweezers, to check that they were all in good order.

"I had no idea that you and Charlotte von Mellendorf were an item," said d’Artagnan.

He didn't stop his hands moving. "I like to be discreet.”

"You fiddle with things like a cat purrs.”

Aramis glanced up. "An interesting observation.”

"Tell me what you need,” said d’Artagnan, very low.

Aramis scrubbed one hand across his eyes. "I need,” he said, forcing a laugh, “to not be alone tonight.”

D’Artagnan caught his hands and held them, palm to palm, between her own. She kissed his fingertips gently, and watched him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn me, fifteen thousand words finished, in only four months even. I feel so free!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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